-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- Investigators now say that , according to automated electronic connections attempts by the ACARS data reporting system of Malaysia Flight 370 , the airplane flew far to the west , in an entirely different direction than it should have been heading as per its original flight-planned route , which was to the north .

The 90-degree turn to the west might have been purely random if entered by a nonpilot or inexpert pilot who knew simply how to turn a single knob -LRB- called the heading bug -RRB- that could command the autopilot to make a turn to a new heading -LRB- or direction -RRB- .

There is strong evidence that this is not what happened .

Investigators now believe , according to news reports , that after its transponder and ACARS radio were turned off , turns were initiated at GPS waypoints . These waypoints are essentially virtual checkpoints in the sky , defining markers charted by airspace regulators that create pathways in the air that airplanes follow to keep safely separated from each other . The waypoints are defined by an exact latitude and longitude and can be located by a number of the airplane 's various navigators , including GPS . If the reports of the flight path are true , it is not a route that could happen by accident .

There are two ways the 777-200 could have flown on this path . After passing one waypoint , it could have been directed to fly to the next waypoint by a pilot turning the heading knob toward that exact place , a process that would require some piloting expertise . This would be very unusual , and a novice or pilot without much flying experience on this plane would not know to make these kinds of inputs or have any conceivable reason to do so .

The almost certain explanation would be that these waypoints were programmed into the flight management system of the 777-200 , a task that would have been beyond the abilities of anyone but a professional pilot . The autopilot follows the course put into the flight management system by the pilots . That is , when the autopilot is not being manually controlled instead . The manual control part is easy . You turn a knob and the airplane goes where you ask it to . The flight management system part is very complicated . I am a commercial pilot , and I have done some training on the Boeing 777 . Even after a few hours of professional instruction I would have been unable to program the flight management system to command the autopilot to fly the flight plan that Flight 370 reportedly flew .

This leaves us with one of two possible conclusions . Either the flight was commandeered by a group with at least one professionally trained pilot among them or one of the pilots in control programmed the new off-route flight plan into the flight management system .

The latter would be far more likely . When terrorists hijacked the airplanes that were flown into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon , they flew the airplanes by hand and those hijackers had trained for months with that exact mission in mind . In the case of Flight 370 , it would almost certainly have remained on autopilot , which would have dutifully followed the flight plan in the flight management system .

That flight plan was quite possibly entered for some mysterious reason by a trained pilot .

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Robert Goyer .

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Robert Goyer : New clues suggest that Flight 370 did n't change course randomly

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Goyer : Only a professional pilot can program specific route pathways

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He believes that whoever altered the flight path was someone with expertise